<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Phallosexual',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		Ellenor&apos;s been calling me an androphile due to my attraction to people of the male sex, regardless of their gender, due to the fact that I don&apos;t identify as masculine.
		Her logic is that since I&apos;m not of the masculine gender, I can&apos;t be technically gay, as I&apos;m not a man, and am therefore not a man attracted to men.
		This word has bothered me a bit though for a while.
		If I&apos;m not a man due to my lack of masculinity, my partner might also not be a man due to lack of masculinity.
		I don&apos;t feel like gender or gender expression hold me back romantically, it&apos;s just the anatomy that does.
		So if gayness isn&apos;t measured using physical bodies as a frame of reference, it seems like androphilism wouldn&apos;t either.
		I&apos;m not needing a masculine partner, and a masculine partner that isn&apos;t physically male won&apos;t work for me.
		I found a <a href="https://haveagaydayorg.tumblr.com/Identities">list of sexual identities</a> though, and found one more appropriate.
		Two identities stood out to me.
		First, &quot;androsexual&quot;.
		Instead of making it sound like I have a fetish for men like &quot;androphile&quot;, it sounds more like a valid sexuality.
		That said, all sexualities are probably fetishes, with the exception of asexuals and bisexuals.
		Even straight people have a fetish for people of the opposite sex; it&apos;s just that that fetish is most common.
		Second, the word &quot;phallosexual&quot; stood out, and seems a better fit for me.
		I&apos;m not attracted to men so much as I&apos;m attracted to penises.
		If there was a woman with a working penis and she was willing to penetrate me, that&apos;s all I&apos;d need from her in bed.
		I mean, we&apos;d still need to click emotionally first, but you get my point.
		Masculine bodies aren&apos;t my thing, penises are.
		These terms are so obscure though that I can&apos;t really find them defined elsewhere; they seem to be only on that list.
		The word &quot;gay&quot; is much more widely-understood, so in conversation outside the queer community, that&apos;s the slightly-inaccurate word I choose to use.
	</p>
	<p>
		Being phallosexual explains the mixed feelings I&apos;ve been having and why I thought I might be a bisexual with trust issues.
		I can experience attraction to someone of any gender; body type doesn&apos;t matter so much to me.
		Masculine bodies and feminine bodies each have their charms.
		It likewise explains why I find the thought of female genitals to be weird and repulsive.
		I think it might at least partly explain why I&apos;m so frustrated at myself for my gayness, too.
		I want to be able to love people of any gender because I <strong>*can*</strong> love people of any gender.
		Unfortunately for me though, gender usually corresponds with sex.
		I need someone that&apos;s physically male and has working male anatomy, so probability says that if I find someone, they&apos;ll be a cismale.
		Still, I feel shallow requiring my partner to have a penis.
		There should be much more important things to consider, y&apos;know?
		I should be able to overlook lack of a penis if we click on an emotional and intellectual level, but I don&apos;t think I can.
		I&apos;m not even going to try again, either.
		Last time, that didn&apos;t go well.
		I&apos;ve learned.
		I can&apos;t override or nullify my instincts, and will only start tearing my psyche again if I try.
	</p>
	<p>
		Long story short, I have a bizarre sexuality that basically amounts to my having a penis fetish, and there&apos;s nothing I can do about it.
		Sexuality in general is stupid, but my own sexual orientation is even more stupid.
	</p>
	<p>
		Come to think of it, being phallosexual explains a lot more about my past than being homosexual would as well.
		For example, I used to want to be a girl, but it was mostly a girl&apos;s sex organs that I wanted.
		I didn&apos;t really imagine myself as a full-bodied girl, I just sort of wanted a cavity in my nether region.
		When I learned about sex in school, I was immediately repulsed by the idea of putting my penis into a vagina.
		Subconsciously, I must&apos;ve realised though that if <strong>*I*</strong> was the one with the vagina, <strong>*I*</strong> could be the one with a penis inside me.
		It would also explain my lack of bodily dysphoria until the Lexi/Xander incident.
		During the Lexi/Xander incident, my mind was broken, so my feelings during that period have to be taken with a grain of salt.
		During that incident though, I only pictured my body as being half-girl.
		I had female genitalia, but the rest of my bodily features were of mixed gender.
		I&apos;m probably not even a demigirl, just a regular agendered person.
		I have some feminine urges, but I have masculine urges too, and I pass pretty easily as a cisgendered male, despite not being one.
		It&apos;d also explain why the sexuality of both my sisters, despite growing up in the same abusive household I did, didn&apos;t have their sexualities repressed like I did.
		One sister is bisexual.
		She&apos;s attracted to people regardless of gender.
		One sister ... I don&apos;t know, but she had a boyfriend.
		She might be bi, might be straight, I haven&apos;t asked.
		She was probably attracted to them in a typical way though.
		In both cases, attraction would&apos;ve been apparent fairly quickly, and they would feel the desire to partner up after seeing a desirable partner.
		For me though ... unless people were walking around nude, I wouldn&apos;t see what attracts me.
		For me to find my sexuality, I would need to first find the desire to partner up, and only <strong>*then*</strong>, figure out who to partner up with.
		As long as I was in that broken state, I wouldn&apos;t find the desire to partner up and wouldn&apos;t ever think about what I need in a partner.
		Speaking of seeing people nude, I always felt strange changing in the locker room at school.
		I always went and hid in a blocked-off corner to change.
		The locker rooms are divided by sex because of heterosexual, cisgendered, sexual tension reasons.
		But if I was attracted to penises, changing in a room full of people with penises would obviously be as uncomfortable for me as changing in the locker room of the opposite sex would be for a cisgendered heterosexual would be.
		Finally, it&apos;d explain why the desire to be a girl faded once I learned more about typical, feminine thought patterns.
		Once I learned more about how women tend to think, I certainly didn&apos;t want to be one!
		It&apos;s not that there&apos;s anything wrong with women, it&apos;s just that I wanted to be me and that&apos;s not what I was or am.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;m tired of explaining myself and the way I speak.
		Every year or so, someone gets on my case about my word choice.
		For example, I don&apos;t call gratis things &quot;free&quot; when they&apos;re not, and that bothers some people.
		I try to explain, and they want to argue about it and convert me to their manner of speech.
		Sometimes, they even claim I&apos;m pushing some agenda.
		When I explain the word &quot;gratis&quot;, I don&apos;t even touch upon free software and free culture, the political topics that led me to the word &quot;gratis&quot;, so it&apos;s not like I&apos;m actually pushing anything in everyday speech.
		I&apos;m done with this though.
		If people complain, I&apos;ll just tell them it&apos;s the way that I type and that they can deal with it.
		I won&apos;t give any explanation any more.
		I&apos;m just done.
	</p>
	<p>
		I think I&apos;ve got my face looking about the way I want it to, more or less.
		It&apos;ll take a few years to grow out my hair further, but there&apos;s not much I can do about that besides wait.
		I think I might put a photo of myself on my about page soon.
		I considered doing it today, but I&apos;ve got some blemishes I want to clear up first.
		It might take days to weeks before the worst of them disappear, so that won&apos;t be happening for a while.
		I&apos;ve never been in the closet about my sexuality, but I&apos;ve been in the closet about my appearance for quite some time online.
		It&apos;s time for that to end.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I started and completed the discussion assignment for the week:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Creating a Java application with a graphical interface, a good programmer can easily make multiple layouts and styles for the same application and different clients without too much effort.
			Using the model-View-Controller paradigm, the model and controller can be developed and used across different versions of the application.
			Then, different views can be created to use the application&apos;s main $a[API].
			Aside from the view, the application&apos;s code only needs to be developed once.
			For each client, a different, client-specific view can be built, meeting each client&apos;s specific needs.
		</p>
		<p>
			I&apos;ve seen a limited version of this type of thing in use for Web applications.
			Many companies offer custom versions of their Web applications for use by specific companies.
			The back-end&apos;s all the same, but the front end includes the client company&apos;s logo, colour scheme, et cetera.
			In this case, most of the front end is actually the same, but that doesn&apos;t necessarily have to be the case.
			A client may want an entirely-different layout, and that&apos;s still possible using the same back end.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I agree.
			A graphical interface is almost always necessary.
			I have people try to get me to use command line applications of a fairly regular basis, but graphical applications are just so much easier to use most of the time.
			For most tasks, I wouldn&apos;t even <strong>*consider*</strong> an application that didn&apos;t have a graphical interface!
		</p>
		<p>
			You make a good point too that Java provides most of the graphical components you could want or need.
			Some other languages require you to build all that from scratch, but the Java language includes a good selection to build with.
			These do provide great compatibility between components and understandability between developers.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			You make a good point about productivity.
			In the past, everything was done on the command line, but that&apos;s not an easy way to do things for the less technically-inclined.
			Even as someone that knows how to use command line software myself, I usually prefer graphical software to get any complex task completed.
		</p>
		<p>
			It&apos;s kind of sad how much an interface needs to be visually attractive though.
			This issue is compounded by the fact that different people find different types of interfaces attractive.
			If you&apos;re familiar with the Linux world, a great example is the different desktop interfaces.
			I prefer something simple and elegant.
			Xfce provides my ideal interface.
			(I actually use $a[LXDE] instead of Xfce though, as Xfce is hopelessly entangled with Thunar, and Thunar refuses to sort files in a directory in a reasonable way.)
			Xfce provides no flashy eye candy where it isn&apos;t needed and isn&apos;t wanted.
			On the other hand, a lot of people prefer $a[KDE].
			$a[KDE] provides over-the-top eye candy everywhere to the point where I can&apos;t stand working with it for more than a couple minutes at a time.
			Different people have different tastes in interfaces, which is why it&apos;s useful to provide different graphical interfaces for different clients.
			Well, that and branding.
			Clients also often want branded versions of your software for use with their company.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			A good non-graphical program should come with command line switched that help the user understand basic usage.
			For example, the <code>--help</code> switch should cause the program to output a list of available switches and a short description of what they each do.
			A manual may be needed in some cases, but if the program is well-coded and implements this common switch, most people won&apos;t actually need the manual except when dealing with more-complex tasks.
			This also fixes the discoverability issue you mentioned in command-line-driven software.
			If well-written, all options even in command line software should be easily discoverable.
			A graphical interface is still by far the easier option though for most users and most use cases.
			When providing software for a client, they&apos;ll usually want it to include an intuitive graphical interface.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
